“As Samsung’s recent second-quarter earnings pre-announcement made clear, the company’s smartphone business is facing some trouble right now,” Zach Epstein reports for BGR.
“At the low end, Samsung is getting squeezed by several aggressive budget vendors selling dirt cheap phones in emerging markets. At the top, Samsung is still facing intense competition from Apple and its insanely popular iPhone lineup,” Epstein reports. “In fact, demand for Apple’s flagship iPhone 5s is still so huge that sales of Samsung’s latest hero phone, the Galaxy S5, couldn’t even top iPhone 5s sales in the Galaxy phone’s first full month on store shelves.”
“Market research firm Counterpoint surveyed 35 markets accounting for 90% of global iPhone 5s and Galaxy S5 sales, and its findings are somewhat staggering. According to the firm, Apple’s iPhone 5s outsold Samsung’s Galaxy S5 handset by 40% in May,” Epstein reports. “May, by the way, was the Galaxy S5′s first full month of sales following mid-April launches in 150 countries including the United States.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Samsung’s Galaxy S5 is a “hero phone” only to ignorati who settle for third-rate knockoffs the world over.
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Could you imagine if the Galaxy S5 outsold the iPhone 6 in its first month (without BOGO deals and channel stuffing scams–I know, it’s hard)? It’d be on the front page of every blog and newspaper, breaking news on CNN. Stock down 25%, reporters would be asking the president for his take on the downfall of Apple. Yet you won’t hear a peep about this beyond our online iWorld.
Yeah, & why does it seem that double standards outnumber standards? Is it because ‘fairness’ is somehow perceived as ‘unjust?’ That’s an Ethics problem. Or is it as simple as Derek Currie’s theory that the Bizarro world sometimes intersects with the real world? That’s a Physics problem.
No wonder so many are in denial — they were D students in both Ethics and Physics…
I guess S5 sales weren’t so “smooth”.
I love all the Android fans are afraid to talk about 64bit and the fingerprint scanner. They keep talking about how Apple is so far behind, sure. I think the fingerprint scanner is the big draw for the 5s. Samgsung won’t advertise their’s becuse it sucks so bad. They won’t be able to ignore 64bit this Fall. For all the talk about screen size is so important, Apple out sales the large Androids.
I like Android and prefer it to IOS, but use both. I not afraid to talk about 64 bit and certainly not a fingerprint scanner. From what I read nor are others.
Those two functions are just smoke to cover the more important areas that the iPhone lacks in. Screen size (which is very important), battery life, durability and OS that is lagging behind Andoid. 64bit does little on the iPhone and is just a spec. at the moment. The finger print scanner an ok gimmick that has been on phones and laptops before, less useful that a stylus.
IOS 8 will go some way to fill the big IOS 7 gaps, the hardware issues we will have to wait until the 6 comes out. It will improve the iphone for sure, but enough to beat even the current crop of smartphones out there now? I am not so sure.
There are lots of specific things Android smartphones offer that the current iPhone doesn’t. IP67 water-resistance, quad- and octa-core processors, removable SD cards, large quad-HD displays, NFC chips and user interchangeable batteries. In most cases it’s only for Android flagship models, and in most cases all the options aren’t all on one smartphone. So there certainly are reasons for the news media or Droidbois to say the iPhone is behind. Apple will likely never try to stuff the iPhone with everything that the Android manufacturers do, so there will always be the cries that Apple is falling behind. Most of the features that Apple has is usually claimed useless by critics because Android doesn’t have them.
Apple fans will just have to put up with the negativity because Apple will probably never get any respect no matter how large and wealthy the company becomes.
The Android contingent in that respect seems kin to audiophiles, for example, who disparage popular listening gear such as Bose, Beats, Apple &etc. as inferior to whatever they’re using. What they’re really doing is tribal bluffing; i.e., self-identifying with a social group and perforce making aggressive displays toward opposing groups. That groupings are organised around consumer choice rather than hard branding, as in nationalism or team sport, does not matter in the expression of social relations amongst primates. The patterns of behaviour are evident to anyone unclouded by blood in the eye.
Thus, your final observation is anthropologically sound. There can never be surcease in any competitive arena. That realisation may not ease hostilities, but it can settle one’s nerves a bit.
oooh, tribal bluffing and surcease! I learn two new terms from one comment 🙂
I was in a Best Buy store a few days ago, and it is incredible just how many Samsung phones and tablets are on display tables there. It took me a long time just to escape the Samsung section and find the phones from all of the other brands. But I don’t think that so many Samsung phones on display really helps them. The phones all start to blend together and look cheap and shabby. I thought that I would be more impressed by seeing the HTC One M8 in person, but it also did not meet my expectations. I do think that Samsung is losing sales to relatively more attractive phones like the HTC One and the LG G3 and perhaps the Sony Xperia. If I decided to go with an Android phone, it would definitely be the unlocked and off-contract Nexus 5 that can be purchased without a contract for around $350.
That’s the way the Nokia cellphone section used to be back in the early 2000s. There were so many models of Nokia cellphones, consumers simply got tired of trying to decide and moved to other brands. Nokia believed they could provide a cellphone model for everyone’s taste and they went overboard with a hundred models with various mixes of features. That was the beginning of the end for Nokia.
You have provided a splendid example of the Paradox of Choice. It’s also the reason I still own an iPhone 4s: there were too many colour choices for the 5c, so I gave up.
The iHating Android Samsung Fanatics are all in a rage. They can’t understand why the iPhone is beating them. The Samsung/Android/Google phones have twice the features list and bigger screen, bigger battery and premium plastic! They are in a fetal position whimpering like a baby.
Cry dear Samsung cry. 😥
You are soooo screwed.
Can you take me back where I came from, can you take me back?
Can you take me back where I came from, Brahma can you take me back?
Then we can tell them Paul’s got to be alive!
Even the “S5” name (and the previous “S4”) is an attempt to copy.
You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but Samsung can fool analysts and tech writers all the time
The android OS is the biggest problem. They have 80% market share in enterprise. That is embarrassing for Apple.
Apple are crying themselves to sleep in their bed feathered by greenbacks.
EMBARRASSING?
This is embarrassing!
60% of Americans couldn’t name all three of the US branches of government
More than half Americans couldn’t identify what the initials GOP stands for
Looking at a map of North America:
29% didn’t know where New York was
29% couldn’t point to the Pacific Ocean
Worse yet, 37 percent of American citizens are incapable of identifying their home country on a MAP of the United States.
29% unable to identify the current Vice President
And The First Amendment:
Although 72% were able to name at least ONE of these rights correctly, this fell to only 28% who could name TWO or more, only 8% who could name THREE or more, only 2 percent who could name FOUR or FIVE. Remarkably, only ONE PERSON of the 1,000 interviewed was able to correctly name all five freedoms.
Perhaps this is why Android does so well.
What other things are embarrassing?